His hand lifted, hovering near her cheek, as if he didn’t trust himself to make contact.
“You are the only thing that makes me remember I was ever anything else.”
Her breath caught.
His eyes darkened—not with cruelty, but hunger. Not just for power… for her.
“I didn’t understand it at first,” he continued, voice dropping to something almost intimate. “It wasn’t a thought. It wasn’t a choice.”
A pause. A flicker of something raw.
“It was instinct. Something older than what they turned me into.”
His fingers brushed her skin—barely there, but it burned.
“I felt you before I ever saw you,” he murmured. “Like something calling me back from the dark.”
Selene’s heart pounded, torn between fear and something far more dangerous.
“And when I finally found you…” he said, leaning closer, his
